After realising a career in science wasn’t for her she retrained as a teacher. Eva attended the prestigious Dartington Hall School, before studying Physiology at Cambridge University.
Other members of Eva’s family also escaped Vienna and settled in England, and their shared experiences later influenced Eva’s writing, with the themes of home, refugees and immigration running through her books.
Born to Jewish parents in Vienna in 1925, at nine years old Eva moved to London to join her mother, a successful novelist and playwright, who had fled Vienna in 1933 after her work was banned by the Nazi authorities. (Dec.Eva Ibbotson’s life was as adventurous as those of the characters she created in her mystical middle-grade stories and sweeping young adult romances. Although the book's dénouement drags on a bit long, readers will come away with the satisfaction of knowing that the good guys are amply rewarded with bright futures and the bad guys get their just deserts. Thanks to a series of surprising coincidences and strokes of good luck, the orphans manage to change their destinies. Suspense steadily rises as all three of the children attempt to escape their undesired fates. Her life would be dismal indeed, if she didn't sneak out every once in a while to meet up with two other orphans with whom she has crossed paths: Clovis, a traveling actor, who longs to return to England, and Finn, a rich heir, who would rather live with the "Indians" than be sent to the British estate where his grandfather eagerly awaits his arrival. The heroine feels like a prisoner, forced to live inside the "dark clinical green" walls of her relatives' bungalow. She dreams of exploring the banks of the Amazon and viewing exotic wildlife, but her self-serving cousins and their spoiled twin daughters despise the outdoors-almost as much as they despise Maia.
In 1910, Maia, an English orphan, accompanied by her newly appointed governess, Miss Minton, sets off to Brazil to live with distant cousins. Ibbotson ( Island of the Aunts) offers another larger-than-life adventure featuring lovable heroes and heroines, nasty villains, much hilarity and a deliciously gnarled plot.
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